On Every Street Corner
by Ante Down
Summary: I waited for you, you know. What Mickey did in the time between Rose and Aliens of London.


**Disclaimer: **Not mine.

**On Every Street Corner**

The day after Rose leaves, Mickey worries. Normally, she worries about him, mothers him. Instead, he wonders what she was doing with that Doctor bloke. But she just met the man. It couldn't be serious. Nothing that would keep her from home for long, blue boxes which fade into nothingness notwithstanding.

He goes round to Rose's place anyway, to see if Jackie's heard from her. Turns out she had, two hours ago. Phone call.

"She sound okay?" he asks.

"Yeah, fine," Jackie responds, slightly puzzled.

Comforted by this, Mickey left. More fool him.

---

Three days after Rose leaves, Mickey was growing even more concerned. Even Jackie was getting a bit antsy. Rose would stay out all night sometimes, even two or three nights in a row, but never more than one night without calling.

He calls her instead. Apparently her phone was out of range. Huh. Guess that blue box didn't have good reception.

---

On the fourth day, Jackie visits him. She looks tired. She wasn't even wearing makeup, and he notices that she looks very different without it.

"Have you seen her?" she blurts out as soon as he opened the door.

"She's not back yet?" he asks. Stupid question. "She's not called or anything?"

"No!" Jackie practically wails.

"Well, Jacks, you've heard from her more recently than me, then," he says.

And Jackie doesn't say goodbye, but runs back to her own apartment.

---

The fifth day, the police visit him. They ask when and where he last saw Rose.

_Running into a blue box owned by an alien who tries and fails to blow up molten plastic faces_. Yeah, sure, like he can tell the police that.

Instead, he tells them that they'd been out walking near the London Eye. He also tells them that they didn't go home together.

"Will you find her?" he asks, getting more worried by the second.

The policeman says that it's quite likely she'll come back in a few days.

---

On the tenth day, he sees the first "missing" poster. He can remember when that photo was taken. He took it.

---

The police ask him to come down to the station sixteen days after Rose vanishes off the face of the earth.

They press him. They want to know if they argued. He says they did. And they had, sort of. She _had_ left him behind, after all, and he's just beginning to realise how much that had hurt. Was hurting.

Unfortunately, the police are more convinced than ever that he has something to do with her disappearance. And he's beginning to think that the police suspect he might have even killed her.

It's also the day he starts looking, _really_ looking, for the blue box Rose left in.

---

Eighteen days, and there is no trace of her. No body. Jackie won't talk to him. Rose's phone is still out of range.

---

Day twenty-one, he visits Jackie for only the second time since Rose vanished. He offers to help her with the posters.

She bursts into tears and screams something barely coherent about how he murdered her daughter. She even slaps him. Then she slams the door in his face.

He's left pounding against the door, shouting "I just want to find her, Jackie!"

---

He remembers Clive at 12:47 a.m. on day twenty-two.

By 3 a.m. he's seen pictures of this Doctor in many places and many times, and he's coming to the conclusion that the blue box really can travel in time.

---

By day fifty-six, and he's now relatively free of official suspicion, as there's not even evidence that Rose is dead. It doesn't make up for the nasty things he finds in his letterbox.

But speaking of those who are dead, his personal list of 'people who have died around the Doctor' has reached a hundred.

---

Day one hundred is the day he realises that he's been counting them. He visits the alley where he last saw Rose, and it's still completely devoid of blue boxes.

---

Day one hundred and fifty, and he visits again.

---

On day one hundred and ninety-three, he thinks he's exhausted all the (relatively reliable) internet sources to be had on the Doctor. He's hacked into some pretty secure places. UNIT, for instance.

Mickey does his best to track down some of the Doctor's old associates- in particular a Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and a woman called Jo Grant- but he fails.

---

On day one hundred and ninety-four, he goes to the library and checks out every book he can find on the Titanic, Krakatoa and the assassination of Kennedy. He knows the Doctor has been present at each event.

---

Day two hundred and twenty-seven, and he now knows more than he ever wanted to about history. He also knows nothing more about what the Doctor does.

---

Day two hundred and sixty-one, he's begun to find the other books, the ones with limited print runs, the ones that often as not contain wild conspiracy theories.

Among some of those conspiracies, Mickey finds the Doctor.

Honestly. The Loch Ness Monster?

Sometimes, the Doctor is mentioned as having companions, usually women. He doesn't find Rose's name anywhere, though.

He hopes she's all right, just like he has every other day since she left.

---

He calls Rose's mobile for the last time on day two hundred and sixty-nine. He wonders if Jackie's stopped calling. He doubts it. The posters are still up.

---

Day two hundred and ninety-nine, and he wonders for the first time if he might be obsessed. What non-obsessed person practically jumps out of their skin when they see a flash of blue on a street corner or a man with short hair wearing a dark jacket?

He knows that he'll continue his search anyway, no matter how much her leaving hurt him.

---

Trisha Delaney asks him out on day three hundred and thirteen. He says no, even though she's the first girl on the estate to really look at him since Rose vanished. Being suspected (and in the court of local gossip, found guilty) of murder really put a dent in his love life.

Besides, Rose might come back one day. One day.

---

But on day three hundred and nineteen, he realises that he doesn't really expect her to.

---

And on day three hundred and twenty, he realises that it doesn't matter anyway.

He's doing this as much for himself as for her. The Doctor has ruined his life, even if he's not a name on the list of the dead.

---

By day three hundred and forty-two, the only thing that gives him hope is the fact that he hasn't found Rose's name on the list of the dead. He hasn't found any mention of his Rose Tyler in any history at all.

Though he supposes that since the Doctor has a time-travelling spaceship, she could be dead in the future or on another planet. He doesn't let himself think that often.

He's seen no sign of the blue box in all this time.

---

He spends day three hundred and sixty-four drunk. Why not?

---

And day three hundred and sixty-five is insane. He sees the Doctor again. Sees _Rose_ again. She tells him that it's only been a few days for her.

It's rather galling to realise that his life has been hell for a year because of human- well, alien- error.

It's also rather galling to realise that Rose doesn't care about what all his research revealed. Though Mickey thinks the Doctor might care, as he taunts him. The Doctor might care just a bit.

He fires a missile at Downing Street to save the world. This is the Doctor's life, the life that creates such a long list of dead people. He supposes that he saved Rose, in a way. He's returned the favour he owed from last year.

More than ever, he thinks he's not the same man he was then.

The Doctor invites him along, and he knows himself enough to know that he can't come, not yet. He knows Rose well enough to know she can't stay yet either.

But she she'll be back in ten seconds. He doesn't believe her, not one bit. But he believes she'll be back.

---

Some days later, he's sitting on a crate opposite where the TARDIS landed, and he realises that the posters are down and that he's stopped counting.


End file.
